Your Starting Point

by Susie Arnett on March 8, 2010

I was speaking with a client who has a beautiful vision for a very unique type of healing center. She told me that the perfect property to house her center just came on the market. But it was going for $2.6 million dollars. “Now what?” she asked, since this wasn’t in her budget.

Then, she spoke these dangerous words,”But if I’m on the right path, the resources will come, right?”

I’m always wary when I hear this type of phrase. Although there is a lot of new age rhetoric about “surrendering”, sometimes this type of surrender is more learned helplessness than giving it up to God. Often, this type of thinking reveals where someone has given up on their idea, waiting for a white knight to come and save the day. In this case, for example, my client hadn’t done anything about her idea since she had seen this property, stymied by its perfection.

This stalled moment is something I call vision blindness. When we’re first envisioning our ideas, we often see them fully executed and many of us have even created vision boards that show us where we want to end up. But this final vision can often be so seductive that it blinds us to our starting point or where we are right now.

The starting point is often judged as being inadequate and inferior to that future vision where everything is fully executed and perfect. We look around ourselves and it’s easy to see what is not there and this can be discouraging. But we don’t judge babies because they can’t perfectly walk or talk, right?

So how do we figure out the baby steps that are possible today instead of waiting for things to be perfect before we begin?

In the Upanishads it is written that “the spider reaches the liberty of space by its own thread,” which always reminds me that our most important resources are inside us. The client above knows she doesn’t really need that property to begin, although it would be nice. Her idea was born out of a deep desire to create community and wasn’t attached to a certain acreage until she made her future vision board.

We spoke about how Jesus began his church under the trees, he didn’t wait for Notre Dame to be built. “How can you begin,” I asked her, “now?” Her passion to create connection was her string and when she followed it, she immediately began to brainstorm alternative spaces and ways to begin. They were steps the size of her own two feet.

I propose you make a vision board of your starting point, of your life today. Focus on the positives – your skills, experience, friends, family, pets. Where something isn’t (money, expertise, partners, etc), use some positive image to represent not the lack but the potent space waiting to be filled. Fall in love with right now because everything you need to create the future is here.

Then, make a vision board of your fully realized idea. Place the two side by side. You might be amazed at the bridges you’ll discover that connect them.

To get from here to there, you must hold both here and there inside you simultaneously. Feel the ground under your feet right now. Look to the sky. In what direction is your next step?

Homework Assignment

1. Make a vision board of your life today and put today’s date at the top of the paper. Either cut out images from magazines or draw the different parts of your life. Use photographs if you like. Create a symbol for what is yet to come. Again, this can be a drawing or an image from a magazine but label it with words like funding or the perfect business or creative or technical partner, etc. Color it, embellish it, pour essential oils on it. Engage your senses!

2. Create a vision board of your realized vision and put a date on it in the future. Also, write your logline at the top of the board next to the date. Include the people that will be part of it, what your day will be like then, how much money you will have in the bank or coming in that day.

3. Look at them side-by-side. What connections do you see? Please share them with us!

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Lightfield Media is a full service production company and consulting firm that specializes in the development, packaging, and production of media products. We work across all platforms, in publishing, TV & Film, and digital. On a content level, we have created and produced media in the alternative wellness space, parenting, pop culture, youth culture, and women's interests.

What's your idea? Transforming this spark in your brain to something concrete in the world is the most inspiring process in the world. We believe in creating and doing business from the inside out so that integrity is maintained in both product and brand development.